Massive Adam Green Blog, Real-Life ‘Frozen’ Terror and ‘Hatchet 2’

Fans of Adam Green are about to have a special 2010. First, his indie thriller Frozen premieres at Sundance this month before arriving in limited theaters on February 5. Second, this Monday production begins on Hatchet 2, his slasher sequel starring Kane “Jason Voorhees” Hodder. Gearing up for a monster New Year, Green has updated his official MySpace blog with images from pre-production on Hatchet 2, along with some stories from behind-the-scenes of Frozen. Check out some of the goodies below.FROZEN

In FROZEN, a typical day on the slopes turns into a chilling nightmare for three snowboarders when they get stranded on the chairlift before their last run. As the ski patrol switches off the night lights, they realize with growing panic that they’ve been left behind dangling high off the ground with no way down.

Now that you know what the film is about, check out this eerie story from FROZEN’s pre-production.

“One day I found myself on a particular chairlift that really seemed to be fitting all of the requirements. I was riding with one of the film’s Producers (Cory Neal) and a representative from the mountain. Sure enough, at one point we cleared a group of trees and found ourselves dangling high above a huge divot in the mountain that had to be well over FIFTY FEET below us. Now for some strange reason I blurted out “This is where they die!”

And the fucking chair stopped.

Now, before I get into how weird it is that the chair just so happened to stop right there, what’s really disturbing is that (without spoiling the movie for everyone) what I SHOULD have said and what I MEANT to say is “This is where they stop!” But some awful feeling came over me and I used the word “die”. The mountain representative called down to the base of the lift using her walkie-talkie (haters take note: real mountain, real ski lift, no fucking cell phone reception.) and they assured us that the lift would start up again momentarily. “Just some high winds up at the peak. Nothing to worry about.” It felt like twenty minutes but in reality we were probably only stuck for about five. Those five minutes were enough to prove to me just what an awfully terrifying situation this would be to get trapped in. Obviously when I wrote it I was dwelling on my own (and most every skier and snowboarder’s) ultimate fear when riding a chairlift, but sitting up there, that high up, waiting for these supposed “winds” to stop… was just plain creepy.”

He continues….

“So cut ahead about two months later. We’re in the last night or two of shooting, happily in the home stretch of what has NOT been an easy production when Kane Hodder (FROZEN’s stunt coordinator and the man also known as “Victor Crowley”) taps me on the shoulder and says: “You’re even sicker than I thought.”

“What?” I replied.

“Oh, come on. You didn’t know?” Kane said.

“Know what?”

Before I could say anything, the crew was taking a break and I was on my way with Kane to speak to the mountain maintenance guys.

“OK, tell Adam what you just told me.” Kane said.

The technician looked at me and said, “Well, we just thought it was kind of eerie that you’re shooting this movie in that spot.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

Now I don’t remember the exact words he used, so I won’t put it in quotes, but essentially what the man told me is that just a year before… a guy who either worked for the mountain (or whom was somehow involved with someone who worked for the mountain) had climbed up lift pole ladder # 5, worked his way out to chair #42, and shot himself dead. The next morning when the mountain crew came in, they noticed someone sitting out on one of the lifts. When they brought the chair around to the bottom, they found a dead body frozen to the seat. The bullet hole is still in the back of chair #42. They showed me. And so, um, yeah- you see where I’m going with this… the guy killed himself in the spot where I decided to shoot FROZEN.

The spot where I strangely blurted out “this is where they die.””

HATCHET 2

With Green hot on the heels of production of HATCHET 2, the writer-director reflects back on some of the HATCHET woes.

“ From the day I wrote it and my agents told me they didn’t believe in it, from the now infamous rejection letter I received from a major studio that said “though the writing is brilliant, unfortunately this film will never get made because it’s not a remake, it’s not a sequel, and its not based on a Japanese one”, to the ridiculously short amount of time we were given to shoot in, to our post-production process being fumbled and destroyed by crooks, to our triumphant moment of getting a coveted U.S. theatrical release… only to be met at the finish line with a crucifixion that saw me forced to stand trial and defend my film and my character before the MPAA… it’s no wonder that by the night HATCHET opened in theaters on Friday September 7, 2007, I hated the movie about as much as any anonymous troll on a message board. I felt like I had literally gone to war and all I wanted to do was be done with it.

Though a sequel was always in the cards (the first one was shot and especially “ended” in a way that was conducive to making a sequel) I needed to go do other things before I would be able to go back that way and let Victor Crowley loose again. As cliché as it may sound, the first HATCHET was a selfish film. I thought of it and invented Victor Crowley when I was only eight years old, so twenty or so years later when I got the chance to shoot it, I merely made the type of movie I wanted to see on the big screen again. But after all of the battles I fought along the way (some were won, many were lost) it was the community of horror fans that carried HATCHET over the finished line. A literal “army” of friends, brothers, and sisters that I never knew I had that rallied behind it and (even without the proper financial support in marketing from it’s distributor) turned HATCHET into one of the biggest successes worldwide of the last decade. I’ve done conventions and film festivals everywhere and seen firsthand the love that the fans have for what we did. I’ve sat through theatrical screenings of HATCHET with sold out auditoriums of kids and adults that can say every line along with the cast. And while creatively I am chomping at the bit to get back to Honey Island Swamp and finish what we started, this time around it’s not just about me anymore, it’s about YOU. It gives me great joy to say that HATCHET 2 is for fans of HATCHET 1 and those fans only. It’s going to be everything you want the sequel to be. Didn’t like the first film? Excellent. Skip this one then, you’re not invited to our party. Liked the first one? You’ll love this. Surprises, plot twists, and swamp boat loads full of gore await you next Fall!”

HATCHET 2 begins lensing next week. Read the entire blog with images over at MySpace.